Most people decide whether to keep reading in the first line. A hook works because of the job it does, so this pack groups thirty opening-line patterns by job. Pick the job your post needs, then fill in the pattern.
What's inside
Thirty patterns across six jobs: stakes, contradiction, payoff, curiosity, story and list. Each one has a fill-in pattern and a worked example. The first 6 of 30 rows:
| job | pattern | example |
|---|---|---|
| Raise the stakes | If you [common action], you're losing [cost]. | If you reply to DMs once a day, you're losing the customers who asked first. |
| Raise the stakes | Stop [habit] before it costs you [result]. | Stop posting without a call to action before it costs you another quiet month. |
| Raise the stakes | [Number]% of [audience] get this wrong. | [4] of the [10] salon profiles we checked had a broken booking link. |
| Raise the stakes | The [thing] nobody checks until it's too late. | The Google review nobody answers until it's too late. |
| Raise the stakes | You have [time] to [do something] before [consequence]. | You have three seconds to stop the scroll before they're gone. |
| Contradict | [Popular advice] is wrong. Here's why. | Posting every day is wrong. Here's why. |
How to use it
0 of 0 done
- Decide what your post needs the reader to feel first: worried, surprised, curious or keen
- Filter the sheet to that job and pick a pattern
- Fill it in with something only you could say. A specific number or name beats a general one. Use only numbers you can back up, since the examples are illustrations
- Read the hook, then the post. If the post doesn't deliver what the hook promised, change the hook
Tips
- Keep the hook under 12 words so it fits before the "more" cut-off.
- Write three hooks for every post and pick the best. The first one is rarely it.
- Try the hook builder at the top of the templates page to see how a pattern reads in the feed.
Where to go next
- Caption formulas to write the rest of the post.
- Call-to-action library for the last line.
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